RFK Jr. Hearing, Trump & Guantánamo Bay, American Airlines Crash w/ Rep. Byron Donalds | PBD Podcast | Ep. 541

Did you ever think you would make it? I feel I'm supposed to taste sweet with the doughy. You know this life made for me. Adam, what's your name? The future looks bright. The handshake is better than anything I ever saw. It's right here. You are a one-on-one? My son, Jay. I think I'm gonna set this for you.

Okay, so we got a superstar in the house folks. We got the great Byron Donalds in the house. It's great to have you here. Hey, first of all, it's really cool to be here. Like my wife, my friends, they're all real jealous because they're not with me. It's really cool, man. Honestly, I'm really happy to be here. And y'all have too much fun already. I can see.

Yeah, I mean, again, letting Tom loose, you're learning. Tom is the one we have to be careful with because when we get HR issues is because of Tom. Yeah, we're working through it. We're working through it. We had a meeting yesterday specifically for coaching these types of moments. Guys, we have a lot of stories to go through that we'll cover here today and we want to get your reaction on many of these stories. The one that just came out, the timing of this story is kind of weird. Rob, if you got the tweet to pull it up, that just kind of shows the data. Byron Donald holds massive lead.

in poll on gubernatorial contenders for the state of Florida. And this just happened, I believe, yesterday, and the number was, what, 32% or something, something like that, 31%. Yeah, we'll talk about that here in a minute. They have them at the top. That's right. And there's a percentage on it, Rob, we'll cover that here in a minute when we get to it.

State of Florida, you know, what things that maybe we need to work on, what will be, you know, if you do run, if you do choose to go that route, what are some areas that Florida can improve on? A lot of us moved here from other states. We love the states. I want to know what you're thinking about that. Then obviously, Jim Acosta had a rough week. You know, this guy was given an incredible job at midnight when no one watches. So even if you make mistakes, no one will know about it. And he said no to it.

And he decides to walk and he said, you know, always focus on your truth, right? Never, you know, sway from the truth. Yeah. And we're going to talk Jim Acosta because he likes freedom of speech so much that he turned off all the comments. So when he posted a video, he doesn't want anybody saying anything about it. So.

We'll have a reaction to it. Trump administration gives ICE quota of 1,800 arrests per day across US. Can you imagine you're working for the guys? If you're not doing 1,800 a day, you're fired like a sales team. I absolutely love that meeting.

This other story sounds like a spoof like a Babylon beer and onion story. It's actually a true story. Trump blocks $50 million in condoms for Gaza and trans operations in Columbia. Some of these numbers are staggering. I think one of the representatives actually talked about it.

Google Maps will make Trump's changes to show Gulf of America and Mount McKinney. This is Google doing it and choosing to do it, which is great. White House to offer buyouts to federal workers who won't work and return to office. I think 6% of them only work from the office. The rest of them don't based on some numbers. We've all seen Trump bans taxpayer funding of child sex change operations, chemical and surgical mutilation. Smugglers transporting vans packed with 26 Chinese migrants detained in Florida.

And this is in Coral Gables that this happened. I think they found out the 40 that you were talking to my Rob for total of 66 will address that. Home in demands apology for my Illinois governor over lie that ICE targeted Chicago schools, slowing fear. White House to open media access to podcasters and influencers. Is this Kennedy legacy? John F Kennedy's grandson slammed for mocking John F Kennedy Jr's voice in a viral video, which you have to see. It's disturbing.

When you see this as well as I think it's his cousin Caroline Kennedy calls her cousin RFK junior or predator And there's even a story about political Murdoch Empire comes out against RFK anyways There's a lot of stories that we'll talk about that

And then, uh, this other story, Anthony Mackie, who's the actor, right? He's the, these the actor that says America doesn't represent Captain America. Okay. America doesn't represent Captain America. Uh, we'll address that as well and have some thoughts on that. Super Bowl 59 tickets are cheaper than they were last year by a mile, not by a hundred bucks or 200 bucks by a mile. And some people are just tired of Patrick Mahomes and the chiefs winning and

the rest of the great job and Taylor Swift and Kelsey and all of that stuff and Kelsey taking a $20 million check from Pfizer. These are interesting moments that we're going through. Maybe we'll talk about that. Then he had a passenger jet with 64 broad aboard collides with Army helicopter while landing at Reagan Airport near DC and the president sent a truth message on this.

And he's a little bit confused on what really happened and how this doesn't make sense. So there's a lot of questions there. Tragic event to you. By the way, we just got the report right now. Vinny, you told me not a single survivor. So tragic. We'll address that.

And then Trump moves to prepare Guantanamo Bay for 30,000 criminal illegal aliens and then signs the Bill Easing the Portation Act, former Senator Bob Menendez sentenced to 11 years, the guy with the gold and all the other stuff for corruption and bribery is now saying Southern New York is the most corrupt and hey, almost like asking the president to bail him out. And then we have a few things to show with RFK.

and then a couple business stories with Starbucks that will address and Vinny really I don't know why Vinny really all night he's been asking Pat can we please cover the story plus size rapper who calls herself BBW Sue's lift over driver said she couldn't fit in the car she weighs apparently 500 pounds 490 pounds and she's suing she's suing lift

Yeah, I mean, it's great. Yeah, maybe we'll address that story. Maybe go front before it's 500 this morning, maybe she had breakfast before before we get into the stories you would buy rent and all the other things that we have going on gang. I want to tell you guys a couple things about Rob, if you can go to VT news.ai.

And when you go to VT News.ai, first 100 days, if you can go to first 100 days, by the way, I think we have 89 days left. Can we just do this question real quick here together? I'm going to vote for mine as well, because I think I'm up to date and my ranking, and I am way behind with everybody. But what is today's question, Rob, the prediction today? Will Trump make an in-person appearance at the Super Bowl?

Uh, I'll give mine if Trump's, I'm going to say my answer is a in person. It's saying yes. He's showing. I say yes. Me too is what I'm saying, special chiefs and that's for five hundred and ninety points. Again, go to VT news.ai and post your prediction. Here's what we're going to be doing. Just so everybody knows. Okay. We decided to run a contest behind this and this will go for the first hundred days. So for the, for the winner at the end, when you win,

The end of a PBD podcast, you'll join us for 10, 15 minutes to tell us how you made all these predictions correctly. Okay. And the competitors on the top 10 cannot be valued, tainment or line holding employees. Okay. If they are and a lot of them are participating,

They're not going to be able to compete in this. It's anybody that's not part of the company that'll compete for this. So if you win, you're the top nuestradamus, you'll be invited to come on the show with us and tell us how you were able to make these predictions. What do you have access to that we don't have? What did you use? Did you use Chad GBT or maybe deep seek? What were you using? And then the top 10 predictors?

With active subscriptions to VT News.ai, you will be invited on your own. Find a way to come down here. We'll pick a date. You come out with the launch of our cigar lounge that we're doing in our comedy club. You'll be invited. We'll go to the back of the VIP cigar lounge. We'll have a cigar together. We'll spend two, three hours together. The whole crew will be there. Conversations talking, having a good time, having a drink.

at the new boardroom cigar lounge that we're launching that will be ready and you will be invited to be a part of that. So again, go compete. There's still 89 days left on this and there's going to be some accelerator points. So some of the questions will be 5,000 points, 1,000 points, 2,000 points. Put it in your calendar every day, 9 a.m., a new prediction is being posted.

So go to vt news.ai first 100 days claim your predictions, subscribe to the membership one of the and either one of the subscriptions that we have that's paid, you'll be able to participate in this contest that we're running. All right. Having said that Byron Donalds, you are in the talks with everybody. Everybody talks about you. Stephen A. Smith was here a couple of weeks ago. We talked about. Oh, that's my guy. Yeah. I mean, him and in many others left, right center, everybody sees you as a superstar. When we were in

DC, you getting up there, the applause, the enthusiasm with you is very high. Even to the point where, you know, you see that chart, Rob, if you can pull up, this literally happened yesterday. Breaking, Congressman Byron Donalds has searched ahead as the leading candidate for Florida's 2026 gubernatorial race in a four-way ballot, very close, obviously, with you in second place.

31.3 and then noon as 4.4 Simpson 2.9 Suarez 1.3 undecided 60.4 head to head ballot. Donald's 33.8 Simpson 5% undecided 61.2. This was brought out I think yesterday is when we saw this. How soon are you planning to announce that you're running for governor for the state of Florida? Look before we get to that this cigar lounge.

I think I think America needs to know I am a cigar guy. Are you really? Well, then you're fully invited. You got a membership on the house anytime you're down here. Boy, you can't do that because health ethics will come for me. So we will figure out a way where I will pay my way into the cigar lounge. And I appreciate you though.

But I will pay my way in. But you see, that was a different way of me offering Faragama shoes to the governor DeSantis. And he didn't want to take the shoes. And I was kindly giving some nice shoes to him. He didn't want to take you, which I fully understand. By the way, if you're saying he didn't take the shoes I offer, by the way, they were how nice we're doing. I wanted that. Then you wanted to do it. Hold them. But are you saying from the health standpoint?

Like from the health standpoint of smoking cigars or no, like you can't ethics. I got it. The ethics committee is the place where nobody ever wants to see the inside of that room. The members that get told that get basically told they're going to be on ethics because it's not really a thing like you don't go to the speaker and say put me on ethics. Like he's basically like you're going on ethics. It's just the place you never want to be. So you know, you just got to be respectful of the process. But to the top question.

man, I'm a kid from Brooklyn, New York. So it's really cool to see that post come out. I think about the governor's race in 26. I'm committed to making sure we get the president's job done in Congress. We have so much to do in a little bit of time. We got to get through all of that before I could defend it. Let me say what I'm going to do one way or the other. But to see that come out yesterday, I was just like it blew me away because like Jeanette Wilton

I served with both of them. When I first got to Tallahassee eight years ago, when I went into the state legislature, I served with both of them. Ashley Moody, who's now a senator, I know her. And so to see those numbers come out, which I didn't know were coming out. I was like leaving Doral because we had our retreat. I was leaving Doral and my phone is blowing up.

And I'm just like, what's going on? And I'm looking and you're getting a thumbs up. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. I mean, what we doing? What's the plan? And I'm like, whoa, so I called my team and I go, we didn't release anything, did we? And they go, no, this came out of left field. We didn't know what's happening. So it's really a blessing. It's humbling more than anything else. But in terms of announcements and plans, we're not there yet.

Okay, so then maybe asking a different quote, how close are you with governor, by the way, governor DeSantis? We've been better. I mean, look, I mean, we never, I never talk about this up, but we're here, so we're just going to. Sure. I think that that relationship got frayed when I backed President Trump in the presidential primaries. And I think from the outside looking in, people remember back in 2022,

When the governor was running for reelection, I was at the election night party. Like I introduced him on stage and they, we had that conversation. They asked me to do it. And I said, of course I'll do it. Whatever you need, because he's been a great governor, best governor in the country. I remember when I first got to Congress, I was calling him America's governor.

And I still believe that to this day, he's been phenomenal. But when it came to a race between him and President Trump, I had to go with President Trump. I just felt President Trump was the right person at the right time. And I think that kind of frayed our relationship because of that. But that's politics sometimes. But I think we'll find a way to figure that out and move forward. So when you think about the policies in the state of Florida, he's done so many things right. He's the reason why we're here. We love being here.

And, you know, a lot of people are still moving here. There's still some issues the state of Florida has, but in specific area of him attracting talent, he's done a phenomenal job. Right. We feel the same exact way. But going back to it, what if you were to run, like if you were to say, you know, one, two, three areas in the state of Florida that we couldn't make better, what would those two or three things be? So I look at it slightly different.

We're the best state in the country. That's to the credit of Ron DeSantis. It's also to the credit of Rick Scott. And in modern politics, the next name I'm going to say, we typically don't like talking about because how they're viewed in Republican politics. But this whole business of Florida being the best would not be in the position we are today without Jeb Bush's governorship.

So Jeb Bush started the transition from a blue state. He had to take on Lawton Childs. And so Jeb, yeah, so if you go back to education policy in our state 30 years ago, it was Jeb Bush's A plus plan in education that started.

the, the conservative revolution first in education and public safety. And then through economic issues, going through the financial collapse and no wait when Rick Scott came in. And then now to making sure that we are the free state of Florida, like Ron DeSantis has done. So you can't tell our story without all three of those men. Now, and I leave out Charlie Christ on purpose because Charlie Christ is Charlie Christ. Now, going forward, you got to keep this thing in the middle of the road.

That's how I see it. Your job going forward is we're the best. Now stay the best. I was talking to some friends of mine and we were having this conversation. I said, you remember the 91 Bulls? Michael broke through every at the time it was Michael's just he's just a scorer, but he's not a winner. They break through in 91. And then the hardest thing after 91 was not that Michael's the greatest because he is.

It is the consistency to stay the best. 92, 93, 96, 97, 98. And the way you stay the best is you got to be in the gym every morning. You got to make sure you're doing your film study. You got to make sure you got everybody on a practice floor. It's the consistency. So now to your question about what do you do as Florida? Number one, you keep it in the middle of the road. Number two, areas for growth. We're already transitioning to be it, but I believe we should be the financial hub of the world in a decade.

The digital assets community in Miami-Dade in particular, but throughout South Florida, it's all coming here. And we have to, I don't wanna say accelerate that, but we have to focus that. Our economy as a state is far more diverse than what it was when I got here 20 years ago. We're not just a retirement state now, we're at everything state. People are living here, growing their businesses here, bringing their businesses here, raising kids here, going to college here, et cetera. Our workforce has to be prepared

for the next wave of our economy. And I'm talking AI, quantum, et cetera. So those are like the two big things I think are in front of us. Housing costs are going to be a problem in our state. And part of housing costs is overspending at the federal level. And oh, we're going to probably get into that. So we have to find a way to stabilize costs so you can stabilize housing costs so construction gets better. I think in a lot of our counties, we have to find ways to streamline permitting because extended permitting only raises the costs of producing homes, et cetera. So that's stuff we got to address.

Energy, if we're going to be the hub of digital assets, Florida should be, in my view, the incubator state for small modular reactors and micro reactors to supplement your energy supply. So you have more base load power. So you can do mining. If you're talking about crypto Bitcoin in particular, if you're talking about blockchain technology and really having to be headquarters here, if you're talking about data centers,

and all the things associated with the next wave of the global economy. Last piece, and this is like a mix of federal and state. We have forgotten the Monroe Doctrine in America. We, I think over the last generation or so, maybe closer to two generations, our eyes have been fixated on the Middle East, Asia, Europe. And we all understand historical significance of why that occurred.

But in that process, we have forgotten Central America and South America. We need to, as a nation, we need to get back to that. Because you may not be able to bring all manufacturing back to the United States, but we have to begin that process of bringing that stuff home. And Florida can definitely be a part of that, especially North Florida, between Jacksonville and the Panhandle. That area could really do some good heavy manufacturing work up there.

But you have to near shore. There's no reason why Guatemala shouldn't be doing a lot of stuff, manufacturing a lot of things to the benefit of the United States. As I understand it, a bunch of our pharmaceutical industry used to be in Puerto Rico.

And then because of, you know, stupid government policy throughout the years, that all moved to Asia. We got a nearshore, all that stuff back into our hemisphere. It will cut our transportation costs down. It will cut the cost of Americans trying to do everything on a day to day basis to live. Florida is the epicenter of that because of just where we are geographically in the country. So I think that our state, if you're talking about what's next to come, those are the things I think are next.

And any other pieces are, you're just fine-tuning. We got the best car on the road. What do you do with the best car on the road? Keep the maintenance up. So here's a question. The question becomes, you know how you used a Michael Jordan example, 91, they break through, they won the first one, the second third. I think the analogy to use that would be

No one's ever once since Michael, to follow Michael. Derek Rose tried. He was the youngest guy to win MVP, but they never won the championship, right? Right. So what is the pressures of following a guy in a state that the people who voted for him are very, very happy with what he's done. So there's not really a, because you got to find a crisis to

come up, right? Or else it's going to be, well, you have a big shadow of a guy that crushed it during COVID and post COVID and all that stuff. How do you overcome that with certain people that are going to say, you know, what are you going to do better than DeSantis? He's done a very good job. I honestly am not really concerned about that. And the reason why is because unlike sports or business, the job of government is to be in the shadows.

And I respect everything that Ron DeSantis has done and accomplished for our state. But I don't look at it in terms of how do I now establish myself? Because if I go through the process with a great state of trying to establish myself, now that's when you start getting cute and you start making or causing political fights that you really don't need or you're doing it too fast just to get your name idea to make yourself look bigger. I would say at this point,

Comparing where I am today to where Governor DeSantis was when he was Congressman DeSantis, I have a national name ID. And I'm not even trying to brag about it. I have one. No, you do. I was in Miami yesterday. I'm walking down the street to a meeting.

And this guy, I forget the name of his business and I'm so sorry, sir, because I should remember his business. He came running out the business and it was one of those reflexology recovery places where they have the cryotherapy and everything. He comes running. I'm just walking down the street. It's just me down the street sunglasses on and I'm looking at my phone. He comes running out and it sucks. And it was just like,

Man, I just want to say thank you. And I was, it caught me off guard, but I was like, of course you're welcome. Like I just do this because I want people to win and succeed. He came out in a sock. He came out in a sock. Was he Armenian or Syrian or?

Gotta be one of those things because I'm in my socks. He was Middle Eastern for sure. He was a shade. He was a shade. He was definitely shades lighter than me. I don't even know what it looks like. But I mean, so like to but to the point of I don't feel the the political pressure sometimes politicians feel where you have to try to assert yourself to get into the national conversation. Right. I think because of the way I've gone about my business.

being obviously a surrogate for the president during one of the most, if not the most consequential, one of the most consequential elections in the history of our country, I don't feel the pressure to have to try to create a situation.

The job for me is just run the state. And I have no problem giving Governor DeSantis all the credit that he deserves because he deserves that credit. And I think that in politics, what we should be doing a lot more is that when somebody does a great job, you acknowledge that, or you give them their flowers or however you want to phrase it. But I don't have to try to find a way to make myself bigger. If I'm governor of this state and all they say about me is,

He did a great job, but he wasn't Ron DeSantis. I could live with that. Okay. So then my follow-up for you would be the following is, I think the decision you made when you were, they said, 2022, you brought him up at the victory, hey, would you come out and support, et cetera, et cetera, great. And then that's the one and a half million landslide victory that he had, right? That's the one. And I remember that evening when he said like, it was historic. It was an epic night. It was an epic night. No question about it.

Miami Day, all these other things that we're reading about, for you to say, no, I'm going with Trump and I'm not going to go with you. Him not being happy, state, all that stuff. Great. Strategically, from the business and marketing standpoint, one would say, between the two, whose tweet has more power?

a Trump's tweet or the sentence tweet, the sentence is tweet. It's not even close. Who's endorsement has more power? Trump. Yeah. And I think the part about the governor that this is how I process it is the sequencing as you're going up, right? Sometimes you want to force something to happen too soon.

And you make move nine on move four and you stumble. Right. Makes sense. And it's kind of like, Hey, you know, no, I don't need to make a phone call to him and tell him that I'm running for office. Why not? Why not give him the credit? Not making a call to Trump when he and I are having a conversation.

I think sequencing-wise, did you watch that from a distance and say, oh, that's a fumble. Why do you not give credit to the guy that helped you become governor? Internally, you seem like a strategist. You seem like a guy that, you know, is stable and you're thinking about it yourself in turn. You seem like a very confident guy. You think very highly of yourself, but at the same time, super likable, very good communicator. You can go in any circle and be able to adapt to that community, whether it's highly intellectual, comedy, culture. You can do that. You're able to

You know, go there. And that's not necessarily something he likes to do, right? It's not in his comfort zone. He's a very good execute. He gets things done, but he doesn't like to go through that. Did you kind of process that yourself and say, oof, that was a mistake. Let me learn from this to not make this mistake for my political career of, because you're not somebody that people are looking at just as a governor. On a 20 year trajectory, you're on a list of a lot of different lists. And, you know, if there's a top 50 names, top 25 names of presidents,

has candidates on the right. You're on that list. So people are looking at you as somebody that, you know, governor, boom, boom, boom, and what comes next, right? And that could be 20, 30, uh, uh, 20, 28. So it's a 20, 26 or four, say 20, 28, 20, 32, 20, 32, 20, 36 ish, like that timeframe and, you know, I'm sure I'm getting old. I'm getting old. That's fine. You're now getting old. Just the strength. But did you kind of watch that fumble and say, Oh, that was a mistake right there. Um, yeah, I did.

And for me, the first thing was, and it wasn't even about politics, it was business. When I was still in finance, my third stop in my career before politics really took off, it was at Moran Edwards, wealth management, now Moran wealth management in Naples. Shout out to Tom Moran, mentor, friend, supporter, love him, love his wife, love his family.

When he brought me into his company, it was really just because he had saw me posting more against Stanley. No, Moran, M-O-R-M-O-R-A-N, Moran Group. Let's give him love. Moran Wealth Management.

That's what Rob was about to give credit to somebody else. I want to get it correct. So we know who it is. But you were saying, when you got into this, he was a great mentor. Great mentor. He brought me in. I think it was 2015. He brought me in and he knew I had a political aspirations and stuff like that. He helped me like build a book of business. He he really, I knew I know economics, but he showed me the ropes of when you having to manage somebody else's wealth.

I'll never forget it. He took a chance on me. So if I, if a client came in the door and was like, Byron, you know what? I really like you, but I don't really want to mess with Tom. I want to move my money to you. The first call I make is to Tom. Tom, client X came to see me. You need to know this. What do you want to do? And because you put me on,

That's something I learned as a kid. You learned that in the streets of New York. You gave me my opportunity. So I have to come to you first. And I think the other thing in politics, and we talked about it when I was sitting in the green room, because everybody talks about the lists and your trajectory and all that stuff, in politics, timing matters more than talent. This is a timing game. It's not a talent game, because there's so many people who come through the game,

who are super talented in various aspects, but if you don't get the timing right, it doesn't matter. And so, you know, look, again, I speak bluntly, I don't try to hide the ball too much. In my core, and you can ask anybody on my team, as my wife, I always felt that the right time for the governor to make that run was 28.

That's how I felt because I felt that at the time with every out as terrible as Joe Biden was as president and how disastrous the bureaucracy was because he was not paying attention. So they were really out there doing whatever with no checks from the elected will of the country. You needed somebody who can step in literally day one and say, yeah, enough, we're not doing any of this to turn all this off. We never had that conversation.

You guys were never in the setting where it's like, Hey, you know, never, no, we didn't have that conversation. So could he have ran, but been more diplomatic, because I remember him getting on Sean Hannity and the shows and he would say, you know what, I'm willing to debate the president. He should be on that stage. And what does he want to come out and sit down and talk to his sounded a little bit, you know,

out of his element, it's almost like maybe somebody was even telling him to do that. Could he have ran in 2023, 2024 and shine while still edifying and protecting the president? I think so, but I mean, he, he's in the, he was in a different space and let's say, um, Vivek, because the governor, and again, to his credit, he had established himself nationally because of how he handled and led our state during COVID.

And he did the best job. It wasn't close in guiding our state through COVID-19 and he had established himself. So every political campaign is like every boxing match, every UFC fight styles make fights. That's just the way it is. So it would have been really tough for him to play it that way because then the next question will be, well, then why are you running? You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And I think I think with Vivek, the reason why I was different from Vivek just outside looking in is because Vivek was new to the scene.

And people didn't really know, I remember the early days with evakes from people was like still trying to figure out how to pronounce both names. Right. You know what I'm saying? And shout out to the fake love him, but that's the truth. Sure. So it's different when you are established, but then you pay deference. The next question is, so then why are you here? I'll tell you a quick story. This is a story that I don't tell publicly much. I'll share it. When I was running for Congress in 2020, one of my opponents, I'm not going to say his name, called me.

and wanted to have a lunch and me. And I knew what he was going to try to do. He was going to try to get me out the race to back him. And we're sitting down and we're just talking 30 minutes later, he goes, listen, Byron, I think you're great. I think you're talented. You could be a future governor. You could be a future senator, but I'm going to have more money in the race. So I think you should drop out and back me because I have the resources to win. And I looked at him and I said,

With everything you just said, my only question is, why aren't you getting out and back in me? Because if you feel I have all these abilities to do all these things, then why are you running?

Well, that's, let me tell you, that's the beautiful part of the experience you have with wealth management because that business, if you're able to convince people and speak to them, you have to do it logically and persuade them to move 10 million, to move my 20 million, to move my 100 million. That's not an easy thing to do. I've been in the industry for a while and I start off with Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder. So this is not an easy gig. Most don't make it. It's a very difficult business time for yourself. You've lived in California, you've lived in Florida and you lived in Texas.

We live in three states together. Every time we move, we move together, right? While we're in Florida and we see what's going on with California with the fires. They're dealing with the fires. Florida's got the hurricanes to deal with, but regardless, we've been in insurance for a long time. I've been in it for 25 years. Insurance is a topic of discussion, both in California and Florida. What's your question for him from somebody that's looking at it from more insurance standpoint for if Byron decides to run as a governor?

Well, first of all, I love what you said and I love what you laid out. You know, you laid out the middle of the road, the financial hub, housing cost, energy, small nukes, all those things are good. The engine of tomorrow is like the family of today. And one of the things that's hitting the family today is insurance costs in Florida. Um, now I credit what you and the governor did in response to not one, not two, but three hurricanes in four years in your district.

And what you guys did to get the rock bridge, you know, the bridge was just pile of rocks and got the bridge over here so you get water and supplies. It was a clinic on just responding to the people. And right now I feel like there's a hurricane and insurance from an industry that we know pretty well.

What do you do to have a similar because it was such an operational response? It wasn't a political response. There was no grandstanding in speeches. It was get squat done. What do you do on insurance? It's such an impact on the family. And then when we're done with that, I like to talk about education sometime today. But right now, the cost to the families, they're flocking here to the magnitude of Florida because they see the best state in the nation. Everything you said true. Right.

What can we do from Washington, from the governor's chair, whatever path you take, whether you go Senate or you come back and you go governor, what do we do to help families because insurance is huge? First thing, I think we have to be honest.

Insurance costs in part are higher because the cost to replace housing is higher. So before you even get into the premiums that people pay, the first thing we got to understand is because of the acceleration of building, the massive inflation in the last four years, scarcity of material, the regulatory environment around getting said material, it is much more expensive to build a home today than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

And the core part of insurance is the replacement cost of the property. So if the house, you know, if the house I own right now to rebuild it, probably what cost me 10 to 15% more than what I pay for it, well, then I can't have an insurance policy written at 300,000 because to replace it, cost me X.

You see what I'm saying? That's the first part. Nobody wants to say that directly to people because housing values are up and building costs are up. It just dovetails and insurance costs are up. Now, how do we stabilize premiums and try to get them to come down? I think the first thing is you have to deal with the capital, the capital basis of the balance sheet of these companies.

Are we gonna have to make them continue to carry as much capital on their balance sheet like we do? We might need to look at it. Talk about lost reserve and reinsurance. Because if you mess with that a little bit, not too crazy, because actuarly it still has to be sound, but you gotta try to find some way where you can stabilize the cost side of their reserves in order to actually issue payments in any event of loss.

The second big thing that I think people are more frustrated about is the speed upon which they get paid. I think people will make the premium payments, but when something happens,

They want the company to step in and do it. Part of that is a justice situation. We got to figure out, and we tried to do this a couple of years ago with public adjusters, and it's kind of been in the weeds and not really thought through too much and figured out. But we got to address that. What the governor and the legislature did in special session two years ago now, I want to say, around litigation was the right step. And so the reforms they did

People won't really see the impact of that from, I think in other two years, because at the Department of Insurance, there's a five year look back on costs in order to set what the new premiums are going to be going forward. So I think in about another year or two, there's going to, they're going to have to go back and do another look back of the last five years and say, okay, now here's what we're going to do. That's like the basis of it. Litigation, lost reserves at the carriers. The other piece is how do we get more carriers into the state?

And that's the toughest issue overall, which is why you have to start looking at what are the capital requirements we're going to put on these carriers, because you need more carriers in order to spread that risk out. If you only have a handful of carriers, the premium costs are going to go up and that's the driver. But if you start to push down on the loan laws, on the reserve costs, and something happens and the carrier goes bankrupt. Well, now people who had that carrier are now really out.

It is, this is not an easy situation to deal with. I think the number one way we, the first thing we got to do is make sure that when disaster strikes, we make it as quick as possible for the carriers to step in and try to make people whole. Because then as long as you're being made whole, then you're getting what you pay for.

Yeah, that's that's that's going to be interesting because in California, a lot of insurance companies, you're hearing about leaving the fair act is forcing them to do a certain fee. And they're like, wait a minute, I don't want to ensure that community that's a risky community. How do I stay in? So the way you spread it is by having a lot of guys, because some guys, even a life insurance, there was companies that their main specialty was cancel cancer.

Like, wait, you guys underwrite Cancer Client? Yes, we do. Or ex-smokers. Or ex-smokers. You really target that audience, we do. But they charge for it. But they charge for it. Right, to that point. To California. Yeah. What they did in California to deal with what we're seeing here, where they said, we're just going to cap rates, we now see that does not work. Because the carriers will just leave. That's right. They'll just be like, I'm not writing it. That's right. And you can't force them to write insurance. At that point, it's not insurance.

At that point, it's basically a public subsidy. That's right. And our state in particular. State FEMA at that point. Yeah. And to be clear, it's on the taxpayer. And to be clear, the state of Florida kind of already has that. It's called citizens. Citizens insurance, the citizens insurance company is a state run insurance company. The one issue with citizens is

The way it's run, you're supposed to be able to be moved out of the citizen's population if you can find a comparable insurance rate. But it has to be dollar for dollar, which just doesn't exist. So the citizen's population, which is the insurer of last resort, just continues to rise. I think when Governor Scott was governor, I think we got the population and citizens down to, I mean, don't call me around 600,000.

It's rising again. I don't know if it's over a million now, but that's because you had a couple storms come through, premiums are going up, carriers are leaving, et cetera. This is the most complex problem we have by far. Well, it'll be a big, I think the 2026 race for the gubernatorial race, I think this will be one of the things that will come up. Yeah. And I think if and when you announce,

I would have my team feed me. I would get so deep into this because those coming, you want them to stay. And if guys can't buy a house because premium is so high, so then they're not going to buy as real estate agents going to take a hit. Economy takes a hit and you don't have more inflow of people coming in. That's right.

And it may be something happens like California, where a lot of guys from LA were moving to Valencia, to Canyon Country, to Palmdale going up. So maybe people will be moving up or out like for Lauderdale going, you know, some of that could be happening. And even all over the place, some of the other people, you're Naples, you're a different part of Florida. But I think this will be one of the main issues coming up in the race. Anyways, let's go into some issues. Thank you for that. So let's go into current events. Let's talk about some stuff. Okay. Number one, Rob, yesterday, RFK juniors hearing

is taking place. And there are so many clips, Rob, that we can go from. Okay. I have a few of them here. I don't know which ones you have ready to go through. You heard his, you know, the one with Mercury, what he said in the past, the worst mayor McDonald's, which which which clips do you have, Rob? Just to. So I have

Are you want to start off with Elizabeth Warren? Yeah, we have that one here. Let's start off with that one. Start off with that one. Doing her Lou Panella impersonation. So watch this. So funny. I'll comply with all the ethical guidelines. That's not the question. You and I, you have said you're asking me not to do a vaccine. No, I am not. Yeah, you are. That's exactly what you're doing.

Look, no one should be fooled here. In the secretary of HHS, Robert Kennedy will have the power to undercut vaccines and vaccine manufacturing across our country. And for all of his talk about follow the science and his promise that he won't interfere with those of us who want to vaccinate his kids, the bottom line is the same. Kennedy can kill off

access to vaccines and make millions of dollars while he does it. Kids might die, but Robert Kennedy can keep cashing in. Oh, God, Senator, I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule.

Rob, can you do me a favor, Rob? And pull up with you, and Vinnie, we're talking about a amount of money that she took in. If you can pull that up, right? The story on. So, topping us through federal election data for Elizabeth Warren 2020 cycle. So, the page contributions from the industries, paid committee, plus any super PACs and hybrid PACs working on his or her behalf. So, this is Elizabeth Warren.

health professionals. What do you see? $2.366 million. Correct. And there's more, actually, if you give me. I have a look. And don't forget the legal industry that goes hand in hand with that. Those are those are hospitals versus 1.6. Miscellaneous health, 600 pharmaceutical health products, 625. Vinny, what do you have?

Yeah, because Anna Mattson did a really, really good piece on XS today, where she said she's getting for lobbyists payments, $125,000 from pharmaceuticals, $491,000 from health professionals, $108,000 from hospitals, all together, $871,000 from the health care agency. And then Karla Jevincin's super PAC gave $14.6 million to support her. She's a physician, she's a big pharma. And then Elizabeth Warren tweeted this, and I quote,

Say goodbye to your smile and say hello to polio. That's what's on the horizon of Robert F. Kennedy becomes a secretary of health and human services. She also said that she's terrified of losing fluoride in her water. It's obvious. She didn't say that. She said that. And this is what this is. She's terrified of losing fluoride in her water.

Why would you say that? What do you mean? I don't know. I don't know what that means, but you know what the main premise of what she was trying to ask him to do. He said, I'll agree to all this stuff, but she's trying to say that you will not be able to sue pharmaceutical companies in the future. Like, what do you mean? I'm not going to be doing that in the future. Like, I'm not going to be able to do my job or make money.

Well, yeah, but it's it's a it was a sort of a two step process it is but at the same time I know what she's trying to get Byron when you're seeing this yesterday happened with RFK and and I'm sure you've spent time with him as well And I'm sure you've been around Warren as well. What are your thoughts when you saw this? I mean the first thing is that

I mean, obviously RFKJ is not a Democrat anymore, but I just personally like watching demo and damn crime. I personally enjoy it, especially when you got, you know, Massachusetts going at each other. Um, what I, what I really see in that clip was I hadn't seen this until just now. The Democrats are in a bad, bad place. They don't really know what to do.

And so for RFKJ, it's not really about his views. It's the fact that he left their team. And she's more mad about that than anything else. Because his views have been this way the entire time. He has not changed. He's just now coming in for President Trump. And so that's why she's acting the way she's acting. And that's one of the biggest problems on the Hill, is that it's not so much about the policy. It's about which team brings it. And that sets the victory all, if you will.

But she's she's lost it again. But Elizabeth Warren. And is she smart? Yes. But she's also diabolical. She has been wrong on so many things in this country, specifically financial policy in this country. She has been wrong.

I'm glad that she, her vote is not going to decide to fade to Robert F Kennedy Jr. Because I think he's going to do a good job at HHS. He's going to do a good job getting to the core health issues that we need to get to in this country. I mean, this is what the American people voted for. Which one is this? This is RFK finishing the confirmation hearing his final message. And then I also have the reaction from inside the confirmation

before you go to this because I want to finish with this. Can you go to the clip where he's being asked about, you know, I'm not going to do anything. Go back to the grandson, by the way, of John F. Kennedy. This is John F. K. John F. K's grandson, if I'm not mistaken, right? Jack Schlossenberg. Right. If you can play this clip, go for it. Everybody.

I'm trying to figure out of the right present to get Donald Trump for the inauguration. So I found a really rare animal and killed it. And I'm going to give it to him. Not just just not sad. It's I'm out. Good. First of all, you know, my family, they're not all Republicans. Some of them are like, we don't know what you do when I first started. Now they're like, okay, this is Byron is who he is, right?

But you on a family level, man, you're not supposed to do that. You just not supposed to do that. That that's disrespectful to your family. And I know like, I guess the sister came out against them has been coming out against them. Man, if you're my family, you could be doing, unless you're breaking the law, I'm not going to be going out doing stuff like that to you. Even if I don't agree with you, because you're family, we can have the political discussion all day long. But that's just disrespectful.

Yeah, and you would think from a family that has, he's had two people in his family murdered, right? Murdered, his other family went up, a Byron, they're, his father. Not just anybody, his father. Yeah, and then they had the whole crew, the whole Kennedy crew went up there and they were supporting Biden. What gives you that motivation to go against your blood, which I agree with you 100% Byron. I'm even more worried, like, bro, this guy, he's not going up against no just something small, like, you know, a city, probably, this guy's going up against

big pharma. And for somebody, Byron, that's already lost two major family members. This is, this is, he's kind of what I think it is because Byron touched on it. Remember the video we saw of Snoop a week ago when we were in DC in 2016 when he basically called out the black community and says, Oh, you're going to be one of them now, right? Uncle Tom type thing. I can't even imagine how many comments you've received like this.

The point with this is it's zero policy. It's all personality. Yes. They're just attacking his character and attacking the person. She called him a predator. This was his first cousin, JFK's daughter, right? That's Caroline Kennedy. It's never a policy debate. I've realized this about Trump. Every one of my friends that hate Trump, I say, tell me a policy you don't agree with. They're like, well, he's a jerk. Right.

All right. He's a he's a this he's a tell me a policy. That's what they're doing with him.

It's, when you don't have an argument to stand on, they use the straw man argument and just basically say, he's mean, he's a jerk, he's an asshole, he's the orange man bad, the mean tweets, whatever it is. But JF, R.F. Bobby Kennedy Jr., the way that they've smeared him and the way that they've vilified him and all they do is just try to attack him and his personality. It's pretty ugly to see. Is this his cousin, Rob? Yes, his first cousin. And if you want to play this clip, go for it.

But now the Bobby has been nominated by President Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, a position that would put him in charge of the health of the American people. I feel an obligation to speak out. Overseeing the FDA, the NIH, the CDC, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, agencies that are charged with protecting the most vulnerable among us,

is an enormous responsibility and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill. He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed. Who's paying her? These facts alone should be disqualifying. Damn. But he has personal problems related to this job, which for me pose even greater concern.

I've known Bobby my whole life. We grew up together. It's no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because Bobby himself is a predator. What dude? Okay. You hear that, right? You hear that. Yeah, that's right. You hear that while they're saying, you know, what they're saying about this and then

To be fair with the previous grandson of John F. Kennedy, if we're going to show one clip, we have to show other clip, not this rap, the picture, the clip. Go to the right. Exactly where you went, Rob? Just, no, no, Rob. The tweet by the guy. Okay, I'm sorry. And just go to the video. If we show one video, I feel we have to show both videos because that wasn't a, this is the same guy, John Levine, that was making fun of Bobby. This is another video. Let's just allow him to present himself. Go for it. She's got a ticket to ride.

She's got to take it. You can stop. But you see, like, so we have a man's man. I get it. Yeah. But the point is, you know, and then they're sitting here talking about Bobby as the job. Like, oh, he is not qualified to do this. Are we quick to forget who Biden put on his administration with the guy and all these

I'm a lady. Do you remember all these folks that were getting jobs like here's one of them? What was his job? He was director of health, our secretary of health and human services. This is the same exact role for the cousin to say Bobby's not qualified for the job. He is.

No, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

He's not qualified. The argument has to be a different argument because you look like clowns making the argument that this guy's not qualified yet. The other guy's qualified. And here's is this the clue where he talks about my boss likes. So I have to this is him talking about how he prays every single day for the last 20 years to be able to be in a position to do something about the health pandemic, which is a good juxtapose to him being a predator from a sister and then or Caroline Kennedy. And then I also go for it. Go for it.

in this country that we must face honestly. And the first thing I've done every morning for the past 20 years is to get on my knees and pray to God that he would put me in a position to end the chronic disease epidemic and to help America's children. That's why I'm so grateful to President Trump for the opportunity to sit before you today and seek your support and partnership in this endeavor.

got a lot like do you believe them i believe absolutely i i believe in me behind the scenes i've had experiences with this guy on the midnight given my wife a call because we were concerned about something with our kids and i don't know what part of the world he's in this guy's a true believer is that rob which clip is this is the mcdonald's clip go for it because understand it and make sure that america's away but i don't want to take

flew away from anybody. If you like a McDonald's cheeseburger, I cook, which my boss loves. You should be able to get them. If you want to eat, I'll host this drink. You should be able to do that. But you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health. And then Rob, if you want to play the final confirmation to hearing an out, Tom, I'll come to you. Play this clip here. So it's too separate close, but they're both very short for it.

Should I be so privileged as to be confirmed, we will make sure our tax dollars support healthy foods. We will scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply. We will remove financial conflicts of interest from our agencies. We will create an honest, unbiased, gold standard science at HHS accountable to the president, to Congress, and to the American people.

We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic and put the nation back on the road to good health. Thank you. And here is the reaction. This is awesome. Do you see this? Mr. Kennedy, I look forward to working with you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for a journey. Look at it. We got people applauding. Thanks. Yeah, you don't see that every day. You don't see that, right, Mark? That does not happen every day on the Hill. I'll tell you that. That's a standing O.

You mean, you don't see that after a speaker leaves a standing ovation around the applause that is very uncommon. Very uncommon. Really? That is rare. Look, I was in a meeting with RFKJ three months ago, four months ago, I can't remember. And it was him and his team. And it was the entire thing was talking about Maha and all the various things that they wanted to do. I've seen cabinet secretaries come in.

He's like overqualified to run HHS because it's not just about the technical pieces of the agency, which is what the Democrats like to talk about. This is why they got wrapped around the axle with Pete Hegsef because they're thinking about, well, how are you going to manage this department and this department and this department? It's not that. It is vision casting. Really the president's vision.

through the head of these agencies to make sure that the changes voters want to see actually occur as opposed to making sure you're micromanaging to bureaucracy, which is what the Democrats want to do. Because if you take the long view of the Democrat Party, even from Woodrow Wilson to today, what they have always wanted is a technocratic federal government that runs

automatically 24 seven, regardless of the will of the voters, regardless of the members of Congress, regardless of the president, quite frankly, that's the government that they've always wanted. Woodrow Wilson wanted it and every Democrat since has wanted it. They actually achieved it under Joe Biden because he was just not mentally capable of being the chief executive.

So they finally have their technocratic government that lives, Warren, and all of them want. And now Donald Trump's in and they're bringing in people like RFKJ who's like, no, we're changing the vision of this agency and every bureaucrat within it is going to be brought to heel.

Well, I mean, listen, people seem to be excited about it. And if he gets in, I will tell you, I tweeted something yesterday. And I said, Rob, if he can just go to, to me, the biggest fear isn't necessary. It's all intertwined and it's all connected because it starts off with one thing.

He's feared by many, but none of them big pharma. Any institution, politician, lobbyists, mainstream media funded by a big pharma will fight to prevent it from being confirmed. That's how simple it is. These guys are throwing money. Do you realize? So imagine a person that's like, let's just say Rachel Maddow, let's say Anderson Cooper, let's say somebody's working at CNN or MSNBC. Where is the funding coming from? So if this person makes six million a year and God knows how much money they got the previous year from big pharma,

That goes away. Your six million could become three million. If CNN's top line revenue dropped $400 million in the last couple years, how much more will it drop if Big Pharma can no longer advertise with mainstream? I mean, the effect of it is so scary for these guys.

that it scares the hell out of the establishment to see this taking place. Tom, your thoughts on this? Your point you just made, Congressman, is my point. When you are too qualified or too informed, there is massive risk to the establishment, and they will find ways to scream that you are not qualified.

So that's point one. The screams at RFK should ratify for everyone that he's the guy for this job. The second is there have been things exposed where we have been like a frog boiled in the pot on HHS for a while. Just want to give you one example. Food dies.

Everywhere else in the world, food dyes and certain red dyes are not allowed in foods. We still use them. If you look at Froot Loops in Canada and Froot Loops in the United States, Froot Loops in the United States is like high definition television color. You look at Froot Loops everywhere else, well, we use different dyes. And they use different dyes for a reason, including things that relate to hyperactivity and kids. Geez, is that a problem? Oh, no problem. We'll just fill in full of ritalin.

That's the color chain. Look at that. There you go. Oh yeah, they're beautiful, beautiful. See that? Those are food dyes that are only allowed in the United States because lobbyists ensured they could get them there because they want to be able to market brightly colored food, fruit loops. So, and this is just one of the things that RFK has brought up. So he's not out there with these weird Vax position. He's out there saying, why is the rest of the world doing this with the studies that are here? And then the third thing I get to, whenever you see people in Congress screaming,

find out who screamed at them before they walked in that room. Oh, that's very true. It's like the people that were screaming at Elizabeth Warren were on her phone, you better knock this MF off. You better get this down. And it's all the money that you pointed out, especially the 14.3 million impact money. 14.6. Yeah. Because when they scream and they look a little theatrical, find out who screamed at them an hour ago. I agree. Okay. All right. So let's see what RFK said about the red dial yesterday though.

This is probably the most poignant part of the entire episode when they basically said straight up RFK are you a conspiracy theorist they just asked them point blank and he's like well What do you mean by that? Do you mean by the fact that you guys told everybody that if they took the vaccine that we couldn't get it and we wouldn't spread well that turned out not to be true and

Do you mean the fact that we, I've been telling you for years that the red dye causes all sorts of health issues? Is this it? Is this the clip? Yes. So it was just like the hypocrisy was ridiculous. Wait, this clip? Yeah, this guy walked into a fist. Conspiracy, thirst. That is a pejorative senator that's applied to me mainly to keep me from asking difficult questions, a powerful interest. Boom. I was told that

I was a conspiracy theorist. That label was applied to me because I said that the vaccine, the COVID vaccine, didn't prevent transmission and it wouldn't prevent infection. When the government was telling people Americans that it would, I was saying that because I was looking at the monkey studies in May of 2020. I was called a conspiracy, and now everybody admits it.

I was called a conspiracy theorist because I said red dye caused cancer. And now FDA has acknowledged that and banned it. I was called a conspiracy theorist because I said, Laura, I lowered IQ. Last week, JAMA published a matter of view of 87 studies saying that there's a direct inverse correlation between IQ laws. All right. So I'm going to send my answer about a week.

going for a week. You're making me look bad. Yeah, let me get off. This is the most important thing I think with him because, you know, Pat, I'm so glad that you pointed out that the previous Joe Biden, Jim put in place as the secretary of health and human services was that transgender person. We're wondering what the health is going on in this country. Right.

And they just came out very quietly. I don't know if you guys heard, but they basically said, Hey guys, listen, yeah, that whole COVID thing turns out it actually did come from a lab. Don't tell anybody though. What do you mean it wasn't a from a wet market with the pangolin? No, it was a lab. So it's just that they came out yesterday in the skiff. I read the Intel report and I'm not going to get into it because it was a classified report. It was clear reading the report that everybody knew it was a lab leak.

It was clear reading the Intel report. Um, that was two years ago. It was clear reading the intelligence report from the various parts of the intelligence community that it was a lab leak.

and and and and rob rob talk about this yesterday on on our podcast on the unusuals and it's like they're still Radcliffe why why i respect the hell out of john Radcliffe he's a head of the cia he was like they're still saying no baron it's most likely to have come can we just definitively say we know it came from wuhan but the question is who leaked it and why did they leave so that's the question so to that point how it typically when you when it when the intelligence community

report something. Yeah. It's each agency within the, the IC, how we refer to it. They have their own findings. And so then they'll compile all the findings into a report. And that's when you get the, it's most likely, most likely. Okay. Because every agency has their own interpretation of what they're seeing and what, what they're receiving and how they want to communicate that.

And then I don't want to get too technical because some of that stuff is classified stuff. But basically this works. Rob, you want to go back to that? Is that Ratcliffe talking about it? She's asking her? Yes. Go for it. Play to clip.

And you right out of the gate come out with this new intelligence that the CIA has concluded. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic arose likely from the leak out of a laboratory in Wuhan as our audience expected. Tell me the significance of the CIA now confirming this, sir.

Well, it's one of the things President Trump and I talked about. Part of what we have to do is we have to restore Americans' trust in our own institutions, like the intelligence community and law enforcement, and that includes the CIA. And, you know, one of the things the President stressed, you know, that the purpose of the CIA is to protect Americans, to keep us safe from foreign threats and foreign adversaries.

But we also need to be truthful with Americans. And he has stressed to me and others that these aren't mutually exclusive missions. We can do both. And so in the case of the CIA, which is the best foreign intelligence service in the world, after five years to not have a public assessment, to be honest with the American people,

about where the likely source of a pandemic that killed millions around the world, including a million Americans and really impacted all 345 million Americans in some way. People lost jobs and lost houses. It makes you question the level of competency. If it takes you five years to identify, when you're trying to, like, what is it going to take for you to find it? You are the CIA. And how weird is it that you announced it a week after the president

is sworn in. How is the timing of it? Oh, now you want to tell us? You couldn't tell it before. Again, credibility in these institutions will go up under Trump's administration. I want to go to the next story. White House to offer buyouts to federal workers who won't return to office.

The White House often buys the federal workers who refuse to return to office under President Trump's order, aiming to reduce the federal workforce and eliminate remote work policy implemented during COVID-19. Katie Miller, an advisor to the Department of Government Efficiency, confirmed the email is being sent to more than 2 million

federal employees, a senior administration official just to justify the move stating we're five years past COVID and just 6% of federal employees work full time in the office. That is unacceptable. The buyout will offer

uh, uh, cover approximately eight months of pay and benefits. According to NBC news with White House aides estimating that between five to 10% of federal employees will take the deal. Axios reported that the plan could say taxpayers a hundred billion dollars annually. The buyouts follow Trump's recent freeze on federal aid and an attempt to pass grant, uh, disbursement, which a federal judge temporarily blocked. Rob, which clip do you have for this one? Cause it's a

I have a few. I have the tweet that you put out last night. If you'd like that video where Trump talks about people being fired, if they don't return to the office. Put that one. Go for it.

Most of the time, they're not working. They're not very productive. And it's unfair to the millions of people in the United States who are, in fact, working hard from job sites and not from their home. As federal employees, they must meet a high standard. They're representing our government. They're representing our country.

If they don't agree by February 6 to show back to work in their office, they will be terminated and we will therefore be downscaling our government, which is something that the last 10 presidents have tried very hard to do but fail. Byron, thoughts on this? It needs to happen. Like, period, full stop. The biggest issue we have is you have a federal bureaucracy that seeks its own interests. They're in the first Trump presidency

They would literally look at the orders and slow walk them or ignore them altogether. Doing this now puts everybody on notice. You're not going to be able to sit at home and say you're working. We had the, I think it was office of presidential personnel. I think that's who it was. It came into oversight a year ago and testified.

in front of the oversight committee and we kept asking her what percentage of the federal workforce is actually in the office at a minimum 30 hours a week. She didn't, she couldn't answer. She did not have the information and it's your job to know who's where the policies around remote work are that you sign up for it. Not that they check that you actually log into it. Now that you're logged in for an extended session, which is very easy to do. They don't check that. It's just that you have the ability to do it.

So, yeah, I'm all for it. If the workers won't come back into the office, because by the way, we're paying the light bill on these buildings still, we're paying the heat bill on a lot of these buildings because they're in DC and other parts of the country, we're paying the insurance, we're paying the cost, the rent, because a lot of these we rent, we don't own these buildings, we rent them.

So as far as I'm concerned, if you're not back, we need to downsize the office space of the federal government. And you can actually move that property for other purposes. We talked about housing in other parts of the country of horse, Florida. You can read, you can reset some of these buildings if you have a great, a really creative developer. But you also get the number of employees down who are entrenched, who quite frankly are the employees who fight us.

when we're trying to do the real reforms that this country desperately needs. The fight comes from their bureaucracy because they come in and say, oh, well, you can't do that.

well why can't i i'm a member of congress i got elected you didn't tell me why you tell me i can't all because it's just how we do things there is a book when i was in uh... at f s u college of business they made a street is called who moved my cheese great book love great book same time same year f s that is that's right two thousand two that is essentially the issue we have enough in the federal bureaucracy you have two million plus individuals

who have their own political vision, and typically it is a very left-leaning political vision, and anything you do to upset the way they want to move is met with recalcitrance, just straight obstruction, quite frankly leaking. That happens all the time in the federal bureaucracy. If something comes down, they don't like, they start leaking to the press. So yeah, if you ain't gonna come into work, he's the chief executive, you're not gonna show up, bye-bye. At least they're getting to pay out,

You know, by the way, you know, it's wild when you're thinking about this time. Do you remember four years ago? Everybody was selling the idea of work from home is a great idea. And this is the fact that people don't accept it. And, you know, Jack Dorsey coming out and saying permanently for the history of Twitter, you can work from home. You never have to come into the office. Oh my God. What a noble CEO Jack Dorsey is and then Elon Musk comes in.

And half the company gets fired, 3750 employees. And by the way, in this story that we're reading, Tom, and I'm coming to you here, the story that we're reading about White House workers getting this offer, an insider story, a business insider story, which we know business insider, which way they lean as well. They said Trump's government worker buyouts are feeling a lot like Musk's Twitter in 2022.

All the stuff that they're doing, which means, hey, coming in, here's an offer, you know, hey, move out the way. But one thing we are realizing very quickly, the common sense making a comeback, nobody works better from home than they do at an office. Nobody does. There's way too many distractions out of them. Now, this doesn't mean some of you guys, when I say this, some entrepreneurs, well, let me tell you something. As a solopreneur, I'm a laptop entrepreneur, and I do all this other stuff. Listen, I didn't tell you, you don't have the right to go do it. I'm telling you.

There's more efficiency when you're around your crew working together and it's becoming very clear that maybe 10% of people are more efficient out of home, but 90% of them are abusing the privileges and they're being exposed. Tom, your thoughts on this?

Well, guess what? What everybody has found out after COVID going back to work now is coming to the federal government. And Congressmen made a comment here that I want to amplify. There are buildings that your taxpayer dollars are paying for that need maintenance and are practically empty, but the leasing, the landscaping, the basic maintenance and the power keeping it warm and cool for nobody.

you know to work there is there so when all of that comes back on the market the cost for commercial building space in that market is going to come down a little bit and maybe a business that is expanding that needs to use the space would appreciate a lease that comes down because if the supply comes up the price will come down it's not going to crash but it's going to come down a little bit and it's going to come out of the taxpayer

pocket and that resource would be available for business people and businesses are expanding or whoever needs that like maybe schools in the inner city that need space. Point one point two is studies came out and there was a you know I like to talk about it there is an organization that failed but it was at Verizon it was Verizon media called oath and Tim Armstrong came out almost immediately and said we have a lot of younger people that are early in your career is working here and guess what

They're not getting promoted as fast. They're not developing as fast. They're not mentoring their people as well. Right. They're not coaching their people as well. Cause they're not effing here. That's right. And he got out there and because remember, Verizon was leaning with the FCC, lean in hard liberal and they were really annoyed that, um, yeah, oath and it was Tim Armstrong that came out of AOL, I believe sometime prior to that, but he put his butt on the neck on the line and said, look,

isn't working because people aren't getting mentored. So that didn't happen. Then they started looking at transactional work. How many calls per hour? How many policies process per hour? And guess what? The facts weren't there. So all of this comment about, Oh, I was more effective from home effective. Be careful. I'm so excited that this has been exposed.

Words, words like effectiveness were used, but feeling words were used. It wasn't numbers. That's right. By the way, I'm telling you, when we were talking about... I'm still upset about that. ...and we're talking about on the podcast four years ago, 70% of America was convinced these guys were right. We took heat in our comments. You guys have no idea you're so selfish, you're so this Adam, your thoughts on this. Well, here's the issue. And you know, you have a few words that you've coined for 2025. But your number one word was what?

twenty five or twenty twenty twenty five europe surprises no you said that you're not a speed signal yes yes yes and that's all i'm thinking about right now because as as um Byron is basically explaining he says they slow walk things down the aisle here we did the last story we just did in the segment here was in twenty twenty two i believe john steward went under the cold bear show and he goes you want me to believe that

The Wuhan virus, the COVID, came from a bat, and a pendulum, and when they're down the street was the Wuhan lab. And he basically called out legacy media, and he called out the big pharma, and Stephen Colbert looked at it like, oh my God, he said, and three years later, when everybody already knew what we already knew. They're like, yeah, by the way, it did come from a lab. Okay, so what's the point here? Congress moves so slow, they're not using speed. These people,

Is anyone still using the work from home COVID excuse for years after COVID? What is happening right now? And Pat, here's what I'll say to you. There's a, and cause you, but you probably get some pushback about working from home work, not working from home. If you're an entrepreneur or you're working commissions and you actually have to eat what you kill, that's a big difference. You talked about they work, do you work 30 hours a week from your house to totally different vibe out there?

So, you know, we're in the federal government where the workers have to show up for work every day, Capitol Hill. If you're a staff member for a member of Congress or a House or Senate, you're in the office, especially when we're in town. Like, if we're not in town, you might be at home because I'm not there, I can't see you. But when we fly in, the staff is there.

There is not a member of Republican or Democrat that I'm aware of that lets the staff work remotely. Do you know why? Because on Capitol Hill, the staff members for the Senate and for the House are at will employees. I think there was a move. I think AOC and a couple of them tried to let their staffs unionize. And I remember I walked in. This was like a couple years ago. I think Pelosi was starting to float it or something. And I walked in a mile and I loved my staff. They're great. I walked in. I looked at them and I said, let's be very clear about something. If you try to unionize, you're all going to be fired.

There's no union here. It is my way. It's my name on the door. And my name was put on this door by the people back home in the district. So I'm showing up and you're showing up. They didn't even question it. I just made sure everybody fully understood the situation. I wouldn't expect anybody from that community want to try to unionize, especially somebody that's wanting to work for you. They're philosophically, they're going to be on your page. You know what's the only time I agree with working from home? If you get paid commission, go for it.

Yeah, if you can do it, go for it. If you're 1099, work for them all if you want to do it. Go ahead. See if you can pull up the results or not. Yeah. If you don't sell, you don't make money. No, you want to stay home. Stay there. I won't care with that. That part makes sense. W2 zero. Yeah. Zero. Do you know how many times we've had W2 employees working from home that's been successful? Zero.

I don't want to get into it right now because we just had a moment a couple weeks ago. I'm not going to be telling stories, but yeah.

The answer, Tom, look at Tom's face, everybody, just look at his face, how red his face got real quick. Yeah, and not because it's Tom, because we just had, we asked somebody a question and it was- Although it might be Tom. Yeah, you know, but the point is that I am so glad all these things that people were trying to convince you that was good. Leave your job and go ask, who cares, but threaten them that if you don't do this thing, you're gonna say, listen, we had a guy that we hired him for $55,000.

60 days after working with us, a recruiter calls him and says, I have another job for $75,000. So my CEO at the time fears losing him because he doesn't want to go back and do the job of finding another person, says, we have to give this guy $75,000 offer. I said, you have, you just started working with me three months. This is how you gain credibility or lose credibility with me. I'll let you make the decision. What do you want to do? Let's give him the raise. Go ahead.

Let's see how you handle this. 90 days later, the guy comes back and says, if you don't give me $120,000 raise, I got an offer to work for my other company, $120. So then he doesn't. The guy goes back. Do you know those people that did that? When when you go and do an interview and somebody says, so tell me about the last four years where you worked and you hear the employees saying the following story.

Well, I stayed home taking care of my dad because he was not doing well. No, it's called you had eight jobs. You don't want to tell us you had eight jobs. I ran a consulting firm for the last two years. No, you didn't. It's called you had a bad experience at a job. You don't want to put them as a reference because I'm going to ask you, can I call your boss at the previous job? You can't put that out. These are red flags you'll learn of people that abused companies when there's a big break in someone's resume. Ask specifically what happened during that time. And if the story goes to

I was taking care of an aging, elderly parent, and they have a wife and three kids, then how did you fund your expenses to do that? What made, I ran a consultant from, can I talk to three of your clients that you did a consulting job for? Well, you know, it was private because we signed an MD and all, okay, I got it.

You hear these scripts, he's like, you know what, guys, too many red flags. I'm not interested in this guy. Let's move on to the next person. That's what happened during that time and employers are now getting smarter, asking questions to not be abused of the views that we took four years ago, because it was real. So the guys that stick around, take care of them, the guys that stay loyal, take care of their families, the guys that were playing those games, that reputation is going to follow you for many, many years to come. Let's go to the next story. Next story I'm going to go to Rob is

Florida, where's the one with pop, pop, pop, pop, there it is. So smugglers transporting, because Trump's administration gave ICE a quote of 1,800 arrests per day across US. And Rob, I don't know if you have the clip on that one. Is this the clip of that one? No, I have that. Hang on one second. That's Stephen Miller. Yeah, if you can play that clip with. So, so these guys are sitting there giving quotas, just like anybody that's working a job, a sales job with a certain expectations, they're coming out saying, look,

1,800 a day, okay, set the quota, per immigration and customs, this is ICE, requiring a minimum of 75 arrests per day for each of these agency's offices, 25 officers, so 75 arrests per day for the 25 officers, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller right here, Rob, if you want to play the clip about the quota.

forces say that ICE has been directed to ramp up arrests to at least 75 per field office per day. If every field office hits that quota or that number, that goal, that would be 1,875 undocumented immigrants arrested every day. Now, the Washington Post reports that President Trump has been disappointed with the numbers so far. I don't know if that's true. You will tell me if it is.

What is the priority, though, when it comes to these deportations? Is the initial goal, as we had been told by Trump allies after the election, to go after those first as a priority, to go after those who have committed violent crimes and are part of violent gangs? Or is it we're just going to go after anybody who is in this country illegally, we're not going to prioritize?

Well, yes, we are going to prioritize. So first of all, the numbers you cited are a floor, not a ceiling, very importantly. They're a floor. The goal is to arrest at least that many, but hopefully many more. Yeah, so that's that part. And by the way, so far, according to this report,

They're at 4,500 arrests since Trump's a return to office. Okay, and that's why they're saying the numbers are now going to be where Trump wants it. I actually could believe the fact that Trump's not happy. He always wants more. That's what a driver is going to do. But then this goes with the story right next to it with smugglers transporting van packed with 26 Chinese migrants. Yeah.

detained in Florida. Rob, if you have the clip on this one, is this the one, Rob? So there's two instances. One happened yesterday where they caught 40 migrants and then nine days prior in the same town, they found 26 Chinese migrants. This is the overhead helicopter news coverage of them busting the 40 in the van. Yes, go for it. Go ahead.

very heavy police presence in Coral Gables. Specifically, we are looking at old Cutler Road and Kendall Drive. That's good. Right to seven. Stephen J. Gray above and seven Sky Force. But what we know so far, Stephen.

Good morning, Tavares. Good morning, Olivia. Yeah, we've got a report of up to 40 migrants in two separate vans here. This is Old Cutler Road northbound here near Kendall Drive. We've got Coral Gables police on scene and we're getting a word that possibly 40 Chinese migrants have

pretty much been pulled over in these vans. You can see through the trees here that the migrants are sitting down. Everything's pretty much under control. Everybody's being good. But once again, the 40 folks in two separate vans, those vans must have been jam packed right here in Coral Gables. I'm sure they're going to wait for a bigger vehicle to transport the migrants to wherever they got to take it. So here's a sense. It says, uh, some of the Chinese citizens found on a toy on a U-Haul truck.

After an abduction report, Coral Gables Police Chief Edward James Hudak revealed that the vehicles contained 16 Chinese females, 15 Chinese males, one male from Cuba, one female from Ecuador. Yeah, so that's these two instances that they had. Rob, is this a different clip of a different instance? So this is the very first instance, which happened about 12 days ago. And this is in Coral Gables. This is the story that you just read, the 26 that they have. Go for it.

wild scene in Coral Gables. More than 20 migrants, mostly from China, part of a suspected smuggling operation, treated inside a city trolley after arriving by boat. We're hearing that this all started back there by Snapper Creek with a possible abduction and Coral Gables police came rushing this way.

sources say it all unfolded when they were dropped off by a vessel Friday morning along the Snapper Creek Canal and put into vehicles. An alert resident calls police. A very alert for you. Good for your homeowners associations observed an abduction in progress. She notified one of our patrolling officers about what she had observed.

And these are the moments an officer drives up on them. Most migrants crammed in this U-Haul van. Three inside the small Toyota in front of it. The officers removed the rope in the back of the truck, which revealed 21 predominantly. Byron, thoughts on this. First thought is,

This is why in Congress, we have to get President Trump's agenda through as quickly as we can. And I know part of the national conversation about what we're doing is been around one big, beautiful bill or two bills. And I think the president at this point is like, it could be one bill, it could be two bill. I don't care. Let's get it done. The number one thing that Tom Holman and Christie know of need.

are dollars from Congress to provide bed space and other officers and additional resources so that this process can actually function. What Stephen Miller is talking about about the floor, yeah, that's correct. But the log jam is going to be they don't have the resources right now under federal appropriations.

to meet the floor. We have sheriff departments in Florida and around the country. Their local jails are now filling up in part because of the 287 G program that helps the repatriation process. So on Capitol Hill, we just left our retreat.

And my comment to the speaker and to the other members is we have to do two reconciliation bills. We cannot do one big bill because it's going to take us too much time to get that done. And Tom Holman and those guys need the resources ASAP in order to have this be an orderly and smooth process that doesn't get log jammed or doesn't get backlogged, which will just back will back spill into sheriff departments, et cetera.

What what was happening here about how so many migrants are coming in jammed into trucks fans and etc. That's been going on for four years. This has been the quiet secret that the Biden administration hid from the American people. I don't know if you guys remember this like probably the last time Joe Biden spoke at a press conference is like four years ago and he I'm serious and he said something like give us some time.

So we can clean up the mess. And then once we get it cleaned up, we'll let you come in and see it. They never let the press come in to see it. And the part of the reason was because when you come across the border illegally, what happens is you have traffickers in our side of the border who are moving people through vans, track the trailers, whatever. There was a story a few years ago, about 40 to 60 people died in the back of a track the trailer

from an exhaustion down in the Houston area, because Houston has become the human trafficking capital of the United States, because they come through the border, they get to Houston, which is the closest major city, and then from Houston, they're basically dispersed all over the country. The Biden administration was doing all that. So that's why I'm saying

Our business on Capitol Hill, we have to get Tom home and the money he needs. It's about $100 billion to them. A S A P because if we don't, it's going to slow down this whole process.

And we're not going to be delivering on what President Trump has said. And I believe what he says, because I've seen it on the ground, the number one issue in the country that the voters want changed. They want the border secured. They want people sent back to their home to their countries where they came from. And it's not just people. It's just not abuela.

It's 184 countries from around the world. I was with a Haitian group on Saturday and they were concerned about Haiti in particular. And I said, if we're going to be honest, what's going on with Haiti is a different situation than China, because Haiti is run by a guy named barbecue. Their government has completely fallen apart. That's what asylum is supposed to be about. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris blew up blue open illegal immigration so bad that the country has no ability to even take in

Haitian migrants who are fleeing legitimate persecution because their government fell apart in Haiti. So to bring it back to center, we have to deliver in Congress. And my view to the speaker and to the leadership is you got to do two bills because you got to deliver the money quickly to President Trump and to Tom Holman and Christie Noem so they can get the job done that the American people want to see done. And we could still do tax policy. Nothing's going to stop us from doing that. We can get tax policy done.

We can get energy policy changed, but we got to deliver the border money immediately. And legitimately, what I think we can do is you do border, you raise the debt ceiling, and you do defense money. And the reason why you raise the debt ceiling is because there's only really two ways to raise it. You can do it in budget reconciliation, where you don't need Democrat Senate votes to do it.

or you do it with Democrat senators. And if you do that deal with Democrat senators, they're going to demand a price for raising the debt ceiling from us, which is actually setting us back from the agenda that the American people voted for in November. So to my colleagues on Capitol Hill, they're going to hear me now. Due to bills, do border debt ceiling and defense money in the first bill.

Let's get that to the President's desk. We can get that to his desk probably by President's Day. I think the really cool thing is, is if the President signed the bill at the State of the Union on March 4th.

Now you talk about imagery, shoot. We're making America safe right now. Boom. Boom. Just like you signed the executive order. Just like you signed the executive order. Boom. Can I say why you're saying it's so important? Right. And why I think the American people are behind it, but I'm going to give it not so much a political diplomatic twist. I'm going to give a guy who's born and raised in my Emmy twist.

Okay. 30 Chinese migrants just roaming around Miami. That literally doesn't happen. Yeah. We don't have Chinese people here in Miami. Like I have literally hundreds, if not thousands of Cuban, Haitian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Argentinian, Brazilian friends, the list goes on. Bolivia, New Uruguay, Paraguay. Dude, I have like two Asian friends straight up.

We don't have Asians, much as Chinese migrants. So, you know how quickly these guys were sighted? What are 30 random Chinese people doing on the street? Like, yeah, are they sick? Like, are they bringing anything here? You just don't see it. I mean, you see it in California, of course. Or you see it in Houston, of course. You don't see it here. So it's the most obvious thing. So what am I saying here?

So, okay, so they're just people that just showing up left and right in this country. This open border policy. And I fully agree with you what you're talking about in Haiti and Cuba and the political persecution. But the worst thing is going to happen is, okay, so these are Chinese migrants, whatever.

What happens if they were from whatever terrorist country that wants to do very bad things to America? They're already here. That's my point. How are we going to find those people? Because this is great. We found these Chinese migrants, you know, whatever they're doing, they're doing. How are we going to find those people? And that's why we got to speed this whole process up. I'm going to dovetail quickly, because it's happening in the state right now. It's like, most people don't know what's happening, but it's happening. The legislature and the governor are having a fight right now over the Florida immigration bill.

My hope is, is that they resolve this quickly. There one aspect of the bill, and this is where the governor is, in my view, correct, is that the police powers around the immigration czar, if you will, have to reside with the governor. Because the governor has police powers, not just in Florida, but in every state. So to change that, to me, is not the appropriate use. But that being said, the reason they need to resolve their dispute quickly is because

They have to be working seamlessly with the federal government in order to make this process work because we know New York they're trying to fight it. Illinois is trying to fight it. Massachusetts is trying to fight it. California is trying to fight it. There are people don't want that. It's their crazy politicians and their state capitals that want it. So we got to get the business done in D.C. immediately.

Because the longer this thing goes, if we don't get it resolved, you're going to start seeing more and more stories of we're running out of space. Look at all these people in these tight quarters, et cetera. And that's what the liberal crazy media is just waiting for. So we got to be disciplined. We got to be about business, get that done, get the president what he needs. He'll get a huge victory. The American people will see they didn't just campaign on it. They were serious about it and they got it done.

And that's what the country needs overnight. There was a story about Gipmo and potentially being used because it'll hold up the 30,000 of the criminal element, the absolute bonafide criminal element among the illegal aliens with the president overnight saying, I kind of like to use Gipmo that'll take some stress off the Sonoma Bay just for people that know the acronym. You have got

Thank you, Wikipedia. And use that because these people are criminals and they should be in a jail. And I guess the president said, and the last time I checked, get most hard to get out of. So maybe that's a good place for the criminal element that are who is the legal aliens and to save the space while we're moving the rest of the folks. Yeah. So, but even in get mode, there's what, 30,000 beds? Joe Biden led in 10 to 15 million people.

So this is what I'm saying. You have a, you have a logistical system that Tom Holman is having to stand up overnight because the Biden team was not helping us do anything until they were officially out the door. So the logistics of this at scale to deal with 10 to 15 million illegals over the last four years, not to mention the people who are here illegally before that time.

And then that doesn't take into account the Godaways. And by the way, you talked about China, the Chinese migrants, the reason why they show up here is because they'll pay the coyotes in the cartels anywhere from the last number I heard was 10 to 60,000 ahead to come into the United States, 10 to $10,000 to $60,000 per person.

to come into the United States. This is big business for the cartels and for the coyotes. And that is why what Joe Biden did was complicit. They were complicit in allowing this. They empowered the cartels. They empowered the coyotes. And it has been the great humanitarian disaster of our time. And if a Republican allowed that, the big media would

I'm just wondering if Selena Gomez is going to cry when they start exporting Chinese migrants out of their over its own. It's just to give you some numbers here. Do you know the number of they call it the unaccompanied alien children? Yeah. Those two names unaccompanied minor children unaccompanied alien children. You know, so they're both of them are pretty much same thing. But let's just go with the UAC. Do you know in 2008 where President Bush was it was his last year?

Do you know that entire year, how many came through roughly 8,041 the entire year? That's it. That's it. Do you know what it was in 2022? 149,000 unaccompanied. Just walking. Let me say it one more time, guys, unaccompanied.

children. Do you know what the average age is? 11 years old. The median age is 13 years old. So 11. And then so the system that they have is because I says, you know, you hear the stories that they talk about that one, you know, they don't have the bandwidth. So we don't have the bandwidth. We don't have the system. So 32,000 of these

They don't have the system to report to each other. So you know, like how in insurance we build a software that the agent can see what is the status of a policy, the carrier can see and report it, the employees can see, everybody can see what's going on with this one client. So the more eyes are on it, the more we can help the policy get approved. So imagine they don't have a system to say, where's this kid at?

Oh, he didn't even show up. The kid didn't show up to the court. Who's following up with what's going on with the? Who's my orchestra's being asked the question? So so what do you guys do? You guys go back and investigate to see what's going on with the kids? You know, the lady from ORR. Do you know this lady markets? I think her name is Brandon. If you can send the clip, she's being interviewed and she says the leader of ORR type in ORR. The office of refugee. That's the one.

Right, the Office of Refugee Resettlement. So they're asking her, hey, so what do you do, Brandon, can you send that clip to Rob, please, that we were looking at yesterday? How often after? So then you're about to lose your mind when you're here to stay. So do you know what percentage of these 300,000 kids are assigned to family less than a third of 300,000 kids less than a third are given to family?

So the other two thirds are giving to somebody and then there is no follow up to see what's going on with the kids school and food, all this stuff. So they don't know if it's human traffic and labor traffic and sex trafficking. There is no follow up. And so they said, well, why is that? Well, because he mentioned this, which is a very good point. While this whole thing was taking place, you remember we were in communication with Tom Holman, Bernard Kirk, we were trying to go to the border to do that stuff. And every time there was something coming up, we were planning on doing a podcast on the border, right?

Guys are sending me proposals. Listen, Pat, to be able to get 10 million out, you're going to need this many trucks, you're going to need security, you're going to need people to go chase them. He says, this is not an easy job. It's a hundred billion on our job. You know how hard that is to find that? This is a catastrophic situation. So when you're hearing these stories being talked about, here's the lady, Rob. Did you find the clip where she's being asked about? So I found a bunch of different clips. I'm waiting for Brandon to send me the right one. But it's that one right there. The one you're on. It's with Josh Hawley asking her questions. That's it.

Yep. Miss Marcus, can I just start with you? You testified a moment ago to Senator Butler that every child gets a know your rights presentation. Is that correct? That is correct. Is that before or after you release them to labor traffickers?

Senator, every child that comes into our care gets a Know Your Rights presentation as well. Have you read these New York Times reports, the series of stories the New York Times has done on the children who are in your care? Have you read them? Yes.

Have you read that children are scrubbing dishes? They are operating heavy machinery. They are delivering meals. They are harvesting coffee. They are working construction. They are working as housekeepers. They are working overnight shifts in plants where they are not paid. They are not going to school. They are not cared for. They are not giving meals. Almost all of it illegally. Are you aware of that?

That's a yes or no. Yes. Are you kidding me? So she's not even denying it that they know about this, right? Then you look at the report to say, okay, so let's see how many calls of traffic and abuse of migrant migrant children are coming and go back to that one day. Yeah, Rob, look at this here, guys. Zoom in. So that's 2018 to 2021, 2021. They're Biden.

Blue is reports of abuser neglect. Look at the number of calls daily. Daily calls, monthly calls. Look at that. 250 is the top. You were getting none of that. Look at the yellow reports of trafficking. See what's going on with the blue and what's going on with the yellow. People are calling saying, please help me. Please help me. Please help me.

This is what they're going through. So for us to sit there and say, let's send more money to Ukraine. So Ukraine is more important than, I mean, let's send more money. You know, let's let. It's almost as if we were talking with Brandon and, you know, it almost feels like someone is benefiting from looking away.

Now, I don't know if that's the case or not, but these are not complicated things that we're looking at. It's pure data. If a stock goes from $8,000 to $149,000,

In 14 years, what do you say? Wow. Yeah. $8,249,000. It's pretty solid. You tell me what goes from $8,000 in 2000 and $8,249,000. Oh, you know what does? The number of unaccompanied alien children to 2008 to today. You don't want to go figure that part out. Where are these people? Where are these kids? What are they doing? It's a travesty of what's going on. So the fact that Tom Holman's out there, him and Kristi know we're out there, right? Being questioned about some of these things, Rob, if you have that,

And one of our old friends I think is in the back. If you can play this clip, go for it. Mr. Hallman and Secretary Nome, can we ask you a few questions here, please? Do you guys gaggle with reporters for a few moments?

You are both the top immigration advisors to President Trump in addition to Stephen Miller. He just announced that he's signing an executive order to put 30,000 detention beds at Guantanamo Bay. I know, Mr. Oven, you've talked about needing more beds. But how exactly would that work and when do you expect it to open? You know, that is something that the White House is working on to use resources that we currently have there at Guantanamo Bay. So we'll go through the process. The worst of the worst is where that could be utilized. So that potential is there. We know we need the infrastructure.

what you probably don't know there's already migrant center there has been there for decades so we're just going to expand upon the existing migrant center logistics work for that how would you get migrants down to climate runtime of both cars

The way he answers it, it's like, what are you talking about? We've been doing it for a while. We're just having to do it the last four years. We're doing it. We're already doing it. We're building it out and using more resources. Mr. Holman, what kind of civilian oversight would there be?

civilian oversight? Yeah. The current civilian oversight that we have in our federal government today. We had an election in November that clearly said the American people don't want these criminals and dangerous individuals on our streets anymore. We're taking care of it at the front of everyone. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one. I don't think it's a good one.

Listen, the law applies to everybody. It applies to American citizens. It applies to people who come into this country illegally. You will be held accountable for breaking our lives. This is where I'm coming from. So when we talk about Biden, I honestly genuinely do not think he had any decision making the entire time. Speaker Johnson just did that podcast. I forgot Barry Weiss.

Where he was saying basically he gets he gets ambushed by you know Kamala the Schumer's he doesn't make it is he didn't even know what what the hell he was signing when it comes to that blatant Invasion Byron because that's exactly what we've had for the past four years brother. It's been an invasion They have terrorists. They have the kids. They have you know the drugs. They have Chinese It's on all different fronts Byron

Hey, how did they get away with it? I understand he's the president, but who's really behind it? And what was their actual objective? Was it for all this turn style stuff? Was it because they're like, all right, listen, we're gonna have all these kids. We could do whatever we want with them. Labor, sex trafficking, whatever. We could, you know, have terrorists just in case we want anybody to ever do whatever. And we have all the drugs. Who's really making the decision? I know a hundred of my orchestras, though. It was the head of Homeland Security. But what, like, what's the main goal of saying, guys, open the border, let everybody in?

The Democrat Party is one of the open borders for decades. And what's the main goal? Because the Democrats are largely a faction, a factional party. They are party of factions, abortion.

open borders, et cetera, all of their different planks. So how they kind of operate as a party is, you may not really, this might not be your issue, but since this is a party, we support all the issues. The staff, and that's why personnel is policy. So what Donald Trump's doing with federal workers and how they just came in with their team ASAP is because personnel is policy.

When you have staffers in the White House who are committed, who work with LaRaza, who work with these other groups that are totally fine with illegal immigration and open borders, to expand our welfare state here in the United States.

All they have to do is write the order on day one. They just stuck the thing in front of Joe Biden. When Joe Biden became the nominee of the Democrats in South Carolina back in, I think it was 2020, the deal had been cut that they thought Bernie Sanders would lose. So they, they all came together, cut the deal and said, okay, we're going to do Joe Biden.

So the deal, part of the deal that basically everybody knows now is Joe Biden had to agree to, had to basically sign off on all the crazy policies. So that was the deal. The staff that went in, it was their vision to do this. That's why overnight they ended, remain in Mexico. They stopped border wall construction. They did all these things. The reason why unaccompanied minors were the first big tranche was because of COVID-19 in Title 42, because Title 42 would not allow adults into the country.

That was under Title 42 because of COVID-19. They wouldn't let adults in, but our policy was, but if a child comes in, we will let that child in. So the cartels knew this. And what they did is they would send tranches, 50 kids, 75 kids, 100 kids. I've seen it where they would walk right up to our border agents and say, we're here and we need you to process us. And the kids are given a script to say,

I was on the border, there was a girl in this group that got stopped, and we were talking to the girl, and she's like, yeah, this is my fourth time coming across. This is business. The Biden administration knew that it was business. The staffers at Homeland and at the White House knew this was going on. They wanted it to go on. They knew young girls were being raped on the journey to our southern border. They knew this, they didn't care. And then the other people who are part of this complicit in this are the NGOs.

The NGOs operate on both sides of the border in order for this entire process to happen. And they use kids as the first wave of it because we as a country would say, if kids come to our border, we will accept them in. But because of COVID rules in Title 42, we're not going to accept in adults.

And that's what happened. It is a staffing issue. It is an ideological issue in the Democrat Party. Even today, they argue against Tom Homan and what he's trying to do because for them, they have always wanted open borders. And this is where people who who have studied and read about the cloud pivot strategy of you overwhelm the system in order to rebuild the system.

that their strategy, some Democrats, not all, some are, you overwhelm each aspect of the federal system and so that when it breaks down, then you get to point the finger and then you get to design the new.

And that's really at the core what's going on. But that's why Donald Trump was elected to stop all this. Who are the NGOs that you've ever had for a second? The biggest one is the Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities is an MGO. They get money from the federal government for

non-profit goodwill work. We have NGOs operating all over the world. I would argue we have too many NGOs that are not operating in the interest of the United States, but the deep state has been funding them for decades. Catholic charities. Catholic charities is one of the larger NGOs.

They operate, I believe, yes, on both sides of the border. And they'll do things like bring clothes, bring, bring water, bring food, stuff like that. Because when these kids are even adults, when they're coming up to the border, they might get a leader of water in their journey. That's it. So they come up starving. They're starving. They're hungry. They're malnourished, et cetera. Catholic charity steps in and provides aid. And the way, the way the Catholic church looks views it is,

We're providing aid to people who are truly in need, and that's their mission. They are given federal funds through the NGO process in order to do that. The problem is, is that we fund this, but it's against our natural, our national interest to do this.

And that's why you have all these funding fights in Washington, because when you start turning these spigots off, it goes to a lot of groups or a lot of contractors who've been had their hand in the kitty for a long time. And then when you start dialing that stuff down, that's when you get these reactions of you're cutting off poor people, you're doing this, you're doing that. No, we are right sizing the federal government once we can actually be efficient for a change. And it can actually do the things that are in the interest of the United States and its people.

If I can just kind of summarize exactly what I heard from you. And Rob, if you can show that stat again, it seems like there's two types of people on that left side of the aisle. There's sort of like the strategic villainous people who are here for open borders and they just want to flood the system. And then there's the deeply empathetic but uninformed people.

that basically, no, like the Selena Gomez is of the world, though my God, they're crying, they're emotional. But okay, we have to let them in, we have to help them. But guys, there's a flip side to it. What's the flip side? Well, look at this. Pat pointed this out. So when we do let them in, you know, you say, don't take my kindness for weakness.

All that empathy that you're ingratiating to this side of the border. Look what happens to the kids that you're letting in. What does this say? It's this is reports of abuses, abuse and neglect and trafficking. Look how much that skyrocketed. That's the report. Those are the kids that could get to a phone. Those are the kids that even speak English.

We, so for Selena Gomez and anybody who, you know, I understand that they have a, in their heart, they feel the most empathetic thing is to just do whatever you can to help people who are impoverished. But when you allow what occurred under the Biden administration, you create a man made humanitarian crisis because those young kids in particular, the girls and young boys who were sold into sex slavery by the cartels who never make it to our border, they're down the rabbit hole.

though that are that not even the unintended consequences. Those are the real consequences of what what occurred. So the most empathetic thing is to secure the nation and not allow illegal immigration because you're not selling adults and frankly, yes, young kids down a life that is unspeakable.

And by the way, didn't Rambo Stallone do a movie on human trafficking that came out a couple years ago? Didn't he do that? If you haven't seen it, I think it's worth watching. Didn't do, I don't know if it was like something everybody talked about, but it's worth watching. It's about him going to Mexico, trying to rescue a young girl that's trapped in a sex trafficking ring.

highly, highly recommend watching this flick. And when you talk about Frank's Francis Fox Piven, you know what I love about the debate with her and Thomas sold. Remember that was a great debate. I was on free to choose, wasn't it? Yeah, it was unbelievable when you see the exchange between the two and she's trying to say, well, you don't understand what you're going through.

Thomas Soul, man. He is a I just finished a book that your son Tico told me to read the reader. Tell me I got it like I feel dumber and dumber every page I read. He is brilliant. Thomas Soul is a freak. If you ever read the reader, he's in the video. Wait, wait, wait, real quick for the American people. The free to chew you can get is on you to the free to choose episodes were phenomenal because it wasn't just Milton Friedman pushing his economic view and his political view.

He brought on left, right, and they would have real intellectual debates about some of the same stuff we're dealing with today. Everybody should go back and watch us. Listen, if you can consume 40 hours of content of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell, you'll never be the same ever again. If you can go through 40 hours of content of these guys, you'll never look at the world the same way ever again. Let's go to the next story. Rob, pass in your jet.

with 64 broad collided with army helicopter while landing at Reagan airport near DC. This tragic event, we've seen these clips. If you want to play this clip, clip rod, there's multiple different angles. This is one of them. It's the one at the bottom, right, Rob? Can you say right? Yeah, that's gonna close up on it. That's the helicopter coming in from the last it's coming.

Oh my God. There's the explosion. Okay. So you're seeing this, United Airlines, sorry, American Airlines flight 5342, carrying 60 passengers and four crew collided with a UH 60 Black Hawk Army helicopter on a training flight near Ronald Reagan airport.

right before 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The FAA confirmed that the crash occurred just over three miles south of the White House and the capital on some of the most controlled airspace in the world. Video footage captured two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball. The air traffic control constructed. P8T 25 pass behind the CRJ moments before the impact, but the plane lost altitude rapidly in its trance.

upon their stop transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway. Do you see Mayor Muriel Bowser announced we are going to recover all fellow citizens, but declined to confirm fatalities. I think they just announced it not one survivor from them. And Rob, which one is this? Do you have the traffic air controller talking to each other? Is this the one or is that a? This is one. Go for it. Play the clip.

fire command. The accident happened in the river, both the helicopter and the plane crashed in the river. He approached him to run like three three.

It was probably out in the middle of the river. I just saw a fireball and then it was just gone. So anything since they hit the river. But it was a CRJ in a helicopter that hit, I would say maybe a half mile off the approach in the pre-three. Wow.

Rob, do you have the other one where the air traffic controllers appear to try to stop collision? Yes, I haven't been able to hear that or listen to that. But yes, this is from BBC story. If you have it, I just send it to you. Let me see if we have the recording of it where, yeah, if you can see what they're saying here after the commercial, let's see what it is. Let me see this one here. Trump even tweets about this. Okay, go for it, Rob.

The crash...

The crash hasn't happened yet, or it's happened already, right? I'm not sure where it lands with you. Need you to land? I need you to land the media. Can you go to the dollar for a few minutes? Oh, this is they're trying to prevent it. This is before the crash. Model 13, can you go to Baltimore?

Wow, obviously a lot more is going to come out. And can you go to President's reaction to this? He tweeted something. The airplane was on a perfect and routine line approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight to the airport for an extended period of time. It is a clear night. The lights on the plane were blazing. Why didn't the helicopter go up or down or turn? Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of just asking if they saw the plane? This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented, not good. Tom, your thoughts on this story here.

Yeah, it appears, you know, I'm not the NTSB, but I was reading everything this morning, everybody else. So that the airport was operating normally, no rain, no snow, you know, clear night and just comings and goings and landings and the CRJ from Wichita.

just coming in normally and there's a routine training mission and where the helicopters cross over airfield and over flight lines which and it just appears that the helicopter for whatever reason didn't pass behind it obviously and so that but that the CRJ was just on a normal land so this is

that the military helicopter and its operations or it's what it was doing on training just ran right into the civilian traffic. That's what I saw this morning in reading all this and I'm curious thoughts. I mean horrible. The airspace in DCA is probably the busiest in the country. Like if you sit out on at

on a top level in a building, you can see there's always military craft moving around. Man, it's just a tragedy. And I think the biggest thing for me is the families of not just, you know, our military personnel that were in a helicopter, but of course everybody was on the plane that was coming in from Wichita. I don't even know. How does the helicopter not see a passenger jet and then maneuver?

And so then if that knowing that was a mechanical failure, what else was going on? Like, I think there's, there's going to be a lot of investigation with the three members of the crew that were on that chopper. We're going to have to like kind of dig in to, to what was going on with them because the, the, when an airline is coming in, everybody knows this at this point, when an airline is coming in on approach.

It is clearly visible. If you've ridden in a helicopter, the biggest thing when you're riding in a helicopter is you're trying to watch out for birds. Because you don't want birds to get caught into the propeller system. So you're kind of always watching for birds. But an airliner is massive. Like a commuter jet is still a massive plane. It's not a 747, but it's a massive plane. So what was going on in the chopper that you couldn't

go up down, take a vase of action, whatever the case might be. How do you even get that close? I got real concerns. I want to stop there. I don't want to comment anymore. But to the families, my prayers go out to you because you lost so many people. And think about how sad this is. This is the number one story on every single outlet, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, you name it. But it's also the number one story on ESPN. Why?

Because apparently the flight was made up of a whole team of the US Gymnast, I'm sorry, US figure skating community. Okay, so this, look, whatever you are on this plane, you're just getting on a flight horrible.

But now on top of it, it's a whole team. It's athletes. We all saw the movie or the story that was based around the martial pride. So this is horrible. This is tragic. I mean, I don't know if it's if it's me. I mean, we see what's going on with Boeing. These plane crashes every single week, every month or something new. And the one number one thing that they say in sports is, okay, if the other team is better and they beat you cool,

But no unforced errors. This was a nice night out. It wasn't snowing. It wasn't raining. This was a complete screw up. I don't know if this is the one on the plane, though. I don't know if this is the one. I mean, obviously, we're going to find out as the investigation gets done. The chopper, like he's saying, your job is to be looking for things. You fly a chopper in a different way than you fly a plane.

Right? Because you know, it's a very different lens to have that. You're especially in a place like three miles away from the White House, like from your right at Reagan National Airport. Like you can't miss it. You cannot miss Reagan National. If people have never flown in, it is the Potomac and then the land and then the strip.

Like you can't miss it very weird to me. And it's weird because all time, these are commercial flights. They all have TCAS, traffic, collision, avoidance system. It tells the pilot how to avoid smaller aircrafts. And that's the reason it was put in because, you know, to avoid hitting commercial, you know, airliners, helicopters, all like that. It tells the pilot when there's traffic that's climb, climb, descend, descend. You ever hear that on an airplane? That's what that system does. So there's a lot of freaking holes in this. And, you know, again, like Byron said,

prayers to these freaking families because Tom, you mentioned it too. That water got, you know, it's freezing and it's only what, seven and a half feet deep. Yeah. And just to show you what it was, they say the aircraft is traveling 140 miles an hour. That's two miles a minute, right? Yeah. And they're saying it was 2,400 feet off runway and a mile is 50, 280. So it is a half mile off. So it's 15 seconds off runway.

So this is not, you know what I'm saying? That's like you've seen it where you see the lights going underneath you and you remember the land. Just about to land. That's the point. That's what he's saying. They were literally about to land. And this happens. Well, again, prayers goes out to the entire family. And I am sure we're going to learn more about what happened with this tragic event. Let's go to the Jim Acosta story. Jim Acosta.

is that CNN? He gets credit for helping President Trump coin the phrase fake news, right? He is the originator when he got up there and did what he did. Tom, he's trying to get a, you know, CNN is firing 200 people. Their top line revenue dropped $400 million. They're really taking a hit. And then while all this stuff is happening,

They offer him a job at midnight, right, Tom? It's a show at midnight that they're offering. And this is the kind of a way of saying, look, if you want to walk, walk, but we're not trying to give you a job. What do you want to do?

And he decides to walk. And I think this is the last clip of his Rob. They can put this. Is this the video or is this the tweet that he posted the video on? This is the farewell to CNN viewers. And then the second one, I have that as well. This is the tweet that he put out about his substance. I want to watch both of them. But go ahead. Play the first one first. Go for it.

I wanted to end today's show by thanking all of the wonderful people who worked behind the scenes at this network. You may have seen some reports about me and the show. And after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing an alternative time slot, CNN offered me, I've decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I've spent here doing the news. People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump. Actually, no. That moment came

here. When I covered former President Barack Obama's trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raoul Castro, about the island's political prisoners. As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson. It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant. I've always believed it's the job of the press to hold power to account. I've always tried to do that here at CNN. And I plan on doing all of that in the future.

One final message. Don't give in to the lies. Don't give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope. Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. I will not give in to the fear. Post it on your social media so people can hear from you too. That's the word.

Hey guys, it's Jim. And let me just say this, I've had quite the day. But as you could see earlier today, this was my last day at CNN. And I did want to jump on Substack Live here for a moment and say, welcome to my new venture. I'm going independent, at least for now. This is just the beginning, but I wanted to invite you to join me here. Is this on Twitter?

Okay, can you go to his Twitter account because this is the one world he's about to enter that I don't know if he's gonna like or not if you go to his account Jim Acosta zoom in a little bit if you could So here this is this is the latest one right to go to sub stack So go a little bit lower go a little bit lower go a little bit lower and then that then there's another clip of him